Hair dying is often a difficult, messy and complex procedure even for hair care professionals. Such professionals need to be skilled in applying hair dying compositions and must be able to consistently and repeatedly blend a diverse number of coloring, coupling and developing agents to provide a client with a desired hair color.
Hair dyes and other additives used in hair dye formulations exist in any number of different delivery or carrier formats. For example, dyes may be powdered or granulated, may be in the form of a free flowing liquid, or may have a gel, cream or paste format. Each different format requires different measuring, mixing and handling equipment. These different formats exemplify one of the problems faced by hair professionals who seek clean, simple, rapid and repeatable means for effecting hair dying.
Another impediment faced by hair care professionals in finding such a clean, simple and repeatable hair coloring process is the fact that oftentimes a plurality of dyes must be mixed to achieve the desired color. In and of itself this presents a major headache for hair care professionals which is made even worse by the fact that the components of the hair dye may be in different delivery formats.
The solubility or mixability of a first dye or bleach in, for example, powder form may be poor when the second dye used is in the form of a viscous cream or paste. Often homogeneity is also a problem. If the first dye is not completely dissolved or completely and homogeneously dispersed within the second dye, or visa versa, then upon activation, "pockets" of color may develop. If these "pockets" of color were applied to a client's hair, the resultant hair color would be most unsatisfactory, leaving the client with leopard-like spots of hair coloring. Moreover, it is possible that, if poorly mixed, one dye could be activated to a considerably greater degree than the second dye. As the useful life of a dye once activated is relatively short, disparate activation times can also lead to anomalous results. To further complicate matters, various dyes and developers are frequently provided in different concentrations, greatly complicating the formulation of custom colors, making such tasks onerous.
Most of the dyes utilized in accordance with the present invention, and within the industry, are oxidative dyes which require an oxidative developer such as peroxide. However, the peroxide developer can be provided in many of the same delivery formats as the hair dyes. Thus, the solubility and/or mixability of an additional necessary component must be considered.
To put these matters in a real life context, an exemplification of a "real life" scenario is set forth. Consider a custom color which requires three dyes (A), (B) and (C). Hair dye (A) is provided in the form of a powder. According to the directions provided by the dye manufacturer, 100 grams of hair dye (A) will dye approximately 1/2 of a head of medium thickness shoulder length hair. Hair dye (B) is provided in a liquid form. According to the manufacturer's recommendation, hair dye (B) is formulated such that 50 ml will completely dye approximately the same amount of hair as 100 grams of hair dye (A). Unfortunately, hair dye (B), while in liquid form, has a very high surface tension. As such it would be difficult to wet and dissolve hair dye (A) in hair dye (B).
Hair dye (C) is provided in a form of a paste. Fifty grams of hair dye (C) will completely dye approximately 1/3 of a head of medium thickness shoulder length hair. Hair dye (C) is neither soluble in the liquid hair dye (B) nor easily mixed with hair dye (A).
Obviously, preparing a custom color from these three dyes would be difficult. None of the three dyes are easily soluble or blendable with the others so as to allow for the formation of a homogeneous mixture. This can dramatically affect the nature and quality of the resulting hair dye color. Second, each of the dyes requires different measuring and metering tools. Third, because the scales provided by the various manufacturers for the amounts of dye needed to color a certain amount of hair are different, the hair care professional will have to manually adjust the amount of hair dyes (A), (B) and (C) so that uniform hair dying capacity is maintained.
A more complex problem develops if the custom color formulation contemplated requires, for example, twice as much hair dye (A) as hair dye (B) or (C). Hair dye (A), being a powder, may not be blendable or dissolvable in lesser amounts of a liquid and paste. A hair care professional will thus face significant scaling problems particularly in attempting to ensure the correct amount of hair dye (C) is utilized. The difficulties in blending the disparate components show themselves in other ways as well. For example, the activity of the components of a hair dye may start to diminish before the second hair dye, with which the first hair dye is to be mixed, is fully activated. If hair dyes (A) and (B) were mixed in the absence of appropriate activation levels, the uniformity of the hair coloring mixture would be affected. Finally, if a hair care professional intended to use the aforementioned formulation as only one of a number of colors, i.e. as in streaking, then the entire dye formulation may have to be scaled down, complicating the formulation and dying process even further.
Although the difficulties of proper hair coloring which face a hair care professional are certainly clear, the problems become even more stark when the environment in which a hair care professional operates is considered. Hair care professionals work in beauty shops or salons. They do not work in chemistry labs; they do not have the benefit of accurate metering equipment; and the mixing and formulation of appropriate hair color must be done in the hub bub of a salon--people talking, phones ringing, hair being cut; in other words amidst great commotion. On top of all this, the stark economic constraints of operating a retail hair salon or beauty shop come into play as hair care professionals have only a limited amount of time to work on developing hair color before the time expended becomes economically excessive.
Cognizant of the aforementioned myriad of problems faced by hair care professionals, the inventors have addressed these needs, in particular, the problems of accurate and repeatable dye formulation. The present invention provides a solution which is simple yet profound, enabling even the unskilled to repeatedly prepare correct dye formulations, without mess, health risk, or inconvenience. Moreover, the resulting dye compositions are convenient to use and apply because they can be prepared in a series of smaller batches and applied by a brush.